October 20, 2012

Benghazi: The 3AM Call

My geopolitical gurus, Spook86 and Wretchard have the damning details:

They KnewThat latter description--"Almost Real-Time"--is a thinly-veiled reference to U.S. SIGINT capabilities. So clearly, there was a trail of SIGINT reporting as the attack unfolded, and it was flowing to key officials in Washington. If Ms. Lamb was monitoring events near real-time, then it's a certainty that the same message traffic was being received at other locations, including the National Military Joint Intelligence Center (NMJIC) in the Pentagon, and the Situation Room at the White House.

Based on previous accounts, we know that President Obama was briefed on the night of the attack, and those updates were almost certainly based on the same intel traffic received at the State Department.

[..]Meanwhile, the National Security Agency (NSA) was adding even more detail to the picture, through its communications intercepts and reporting. So, as the attack unfolded, administration officials not only knew what was going on inside the consulate, they had a good idea of who was behind the incident, and were quite aware the sophisticated attack (using RPGs and other heavy weapons) was not the work of an angry mob.

Yet, the administration continued to lie, as evidenced by Joe Biden's whoppers last week, and the "video" story that made the rounds last month. Such conduct is inexcusable, and beyond the pale by any stretch of political imagination. Yet the same media that worried about George Bush's "lies" in Iraq have exhibited far less concern about the fabrications that followed the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, including the administration's refusal to describe the incident as a terrorist attack for nearly two weeks.

The evidence is now clear. The administration had no warning of the attack on the Benghazi consulate apart from more than a dozen previous attacks. The AP reports:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Despite two explosions and dozens of other security threats, U.S. officials in Washington turned down repeated pleas from American diplomats in Libya to increase security at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi where the U.S. ambassador was killed, leaders of a House committee asserted Tuesday …

Issa, R-Calif. and Chaffetz, R-Utah said the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans was the latest in a long line of attacks on Western diplomats and officials in Libya in the months before Sept. 11.

The letter listed 13 incidents, but Chaffetz said in an interview there were more than 50. Two of them involved explosive devices: a June 6 blast that blew a hole in the security perimeter. The explosion was described to the committee as “big enough for forty men to go through”; and an April 6 incident where two Libyans who were fired by a security contactor threw a small explosive device over the consulate fence.

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My geopolitical gurus, Spook86 and Wretchard have the damning details:

They KnewThat latter description--"Almost Real-Time"--is a thinly-veiled reference to U.S. SIGINT capabilities. So clearly, there was a trail of SIGINT reporting as the attack unfolded, and it was flowing to key officials in Washington. If Ms. Lamb was monitoring events near real-time, then it's a certainty that the same message traffic was being received at other locations, including the National Military Joint Intelligence Center (NMJIC) in the Pentagon, and the Situation Room at the White House.

Based on previous accounts, we know that President Obama was briefed on the night of the attack, and those updates were almost certainly based on the same intel traffic received at the State Department.

[..]Meanwhile, the National Security Agency (NSA) was adding even more detail to the picture, through its communications intercepts and reporting. So, as the attack unfolded, administration officials not only knew what was going on inside the consulate, they had a good idea of who was behind the incident, and were quite aware the sophisticated attack (using RPGs and other heavy weapons) was not the work of an angry mob.

Yet, the administration continued to lie, as evidenced by Joe Biden's whoppers last week, and the "video" story that made the rounds last month. Such conduct is inexcusable, and beyond the pale by any stretch of political imagination. Yet the same media that worried about George Bush's "lies" in Iraq have exhibited far less concern about the fabrications that followed the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, including the administration's refusal to describe the incident as a terrorist attack for nearly two weeks.

The evidence is now clear. The administration had no warning of the attack on the Benghazi consulate apart from more than a dozen previous attacks. The AP reports:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Despite two explosions and dozens of other security threats, U.S. officials in Washington turned down repeated pleas from American diplomats in Libya to increase security at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi where the U.S. ambassador was killed, leaders of a House committee asserted Tuesday …

Issa, R-Calif. and Chaffetz, R-Utah said the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans was the latest in a long line of attacks on Western diplomats and officials in Libya in the months before Sept. 11.

The letter listed 13 incidents, but Chaffetz said in an interview there were more than 50. Two of them involved explosive devices: a June 6 blast that blew a hole in the security perimeter. The explosion was described to the committee as “big enough for forty men to go through”; and an April 6 incident where two Libyans who were fired by a security contactor threw a small explosive device over the consulate fence.